Safe travels

Last night, my husband and I (and our two dogs) arrived back from Florida. Just in time, too, since we woke up to a fresh coat of snow and blizzard warnings for tomorrow. This post is titled “safe travels” because our last three trips to Florida resulted in two Emergency Room visits for health issues and one crashed car. If both our parents didn’t live there, we wouldn’t have gone back ever, lol. This time, thank God, we avoided the Emergency Room and a car crash. Hopefully this means our Florida Curse is over since we’re going back next March for the Southwest Florida Reading Festival in Fort Myers.

This is the first time we traveled with our new puppy, Loki. Gypsy is a regular road warrior with how many trips she’s taken with us so we didn’t have any concerns about how she’d act, but Loki is still in the see-it-chew-it stage of being a puppy. Visions of high fees for ruined furniture danced in my head each time we left him in the hotel room, but Loki turned out to be an excellent traveler. He slept on the car floor for most of the 12 hour drive and in the hotel room, he was content to eat his bones instead of the furniture. Gypsy had the most issues, actually. Before the new puppy arrived, when we took long car trips, she sat on pillows piled up on someone’s lap. Since that wouldn’t have been fair to do with her while leaving Loki in the back (or safe to have him set up that way on the driver’s lap) Gypsy was reduced to being in the back with her little brother. She sat on the seat most of the way, occasionally giving us accusing glances for her lack of a pillow-laced lap. See for yourselves:

This outrage will NOT go unpunished.

I didn’t take a picture of Loki because every time I pointed a camera at him, he’d wake up and charge it. Since I already have a couple too-close-to-discern photos of his nose, I didn’t bother taking more of those ;-).

In non-travel news, copyedits for Twice Tempted have landed. Once I finish those, it’ll be time to start back on Cat and Bones #7, tentatively titled Up from the Grave. The first chapter is already done and an excerpt of it will be at the back of Twice Tempted, but there’s a long way to go between Chapter Two and The End, of course. Before I start to angst over that, I have an inbox to clean out. Going away is fun, especially when hospitals and car insurance claims aren’t involved, but it also means a pile of work to catch up on once I’m back.

Hope everyone is doing well and that those in the path of Hurricane Sandy stay safe!

You should get a dog seat for Gypsy-mine is essentialy a big foam block with a cover that straps down with the safety belt and you tether your dog to the safety belt. They love it because they can see out the windows and it keeps them safe. We have two Havanese and both love to be in the Dog Seat. Love your books!!! Keep writing. You should do Tate’s story sometime.